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Ontario’s election lessons for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives: Cohn

The first reflex is to revisit Ontario’s 1985 election, when a deadlocked minority legislature gave birth to a formal co-operation accord. The NDP propped up the governing Liberals to deliver a progressive legislative agenda for two years.

Thirty years later, we’re still waiting for an encore. Our more recent history suggests politicians will do everything in their power to hang on to power in hung parliaments.

Federally (2006, 2008, 2011) and provincially (2011, 2014), analysts had visions of déjà vu all over again, circa 1985 — but it never came to pass. The problem for pundits is that history has a habit of not repeating itself, unless the precise conditions are in place.

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Personal, political and ideological factors drove the events of 1985, and offer clues to any future political alignment. And as we shall see, there is an alternative Ontario playbook for minority governments that Harper, as the incumbent prime minister, might be looking at instead:

Momentum matters. In 1985, there was a widespread desire for regime change — or, more precisely, dumping a Tory dynasty that had run Ontario uninterrupted for four decades. In more recent elections — federally and provincially — the governing party (Liberals in Ontario, Conservatives in Ottawa) may have been unpopular, but hadn’t been around forever. A proposed 2008 federal coalition proposal among Liberals, the NDP, and Bloc Québécois failed not just because of the BQ’s separatist taint, but the lack of accumulated animus against Harper’s Tories, who had been in power for barely two years.

The seat count is what counts. In 1985, the Progressive Conservatives had won 52 seats — merely four more than the second-place Liberals, who could count on another 25 seats from the NDP. It also helped, with both the optics and politics, that the Liberals had edged out the Tories in the popular vote (37.9 per cent versus 37 per cent).

Commonality counts. Back in 1985, the opposition Liberals and New Democrats who ganged up against the right-leaning Progressive Conservatives had far more in common with one another than the government. Their joint accord spelled out a shared progressive agenda.

In next Monday’s election, the federal Liberals and New Democrats are both campaigning as agents of change — specifically regime change. What makes them more likely to fulfil their shared promise of ousting Harper is that they share so much in common. Their rival platforms reveal only minor differences, thanks to an unprecedented role reversal: Trudeau campaigned from the centre-left (deficits are here to stay), while the NDP’s Mulcair counter-campaigned from the centre-right (deficits are heresy).

But before they can team up to topple the Tories, Harper may yet beat them to the punch. Beyond the Liberal-NDP accord of three decades ago, he need go back only three years ago to behold another useful Ontario precedent for the federal scene.

In late 2012, Dalton McGuinty used a two-pronged prorogation-resignation strategy to outmanoeuvre the opposition. With his popularity waning amid minority government tumult, Ontario’s then-premier called a leadership race that allowed Kathleen Wynne to take over as party chief and premier in early 2013.

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In so doing, he deftly averted regime change by averring regime renewal. In the aftermath, Ontario’s opposition parties declined to defeat Wynne on a budget confidence vote, buying her another year in power to revive the Liberals in time for their 2014 election victory.

Borrowing McGuinty’s playbook, Harper could pre-empt the prospect of an opposition accord by resigning of his own accord — handing off power to a Conservative successor rather than handing it over to his opposition rivals. Like McGuinty, he could announce his departure would take effect after a Conservative convention chooses a new leader, delaying the return of Parliament — or possibly proroguing it — until then.

Resignation, prorogation, succession? With a more popular leader in place (say, Jason Kenney), the renewed Conservatives might weaken the opposition’s resolve to replace them without fresh elections. A majority of Canadian voters are anti-Harper in 2015, but may not necessarily be anti-Conservative or anti-Kenney a few months from now.

Can the ruling Conservatives avert regime change by changing leaders at the federal level? Ontario’s two history lessons — from three decades ago and three years ago — offer two possible pathways.

The only safe prediction is that the exercise of power makes all politicians extremely unpredictable.

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